Although not exclusively, such an airport viewing system is more particularly intended for assisting the navigation of an aircraft on the ground of an airport, in the context of an airport navigation function. It is known that such an airport navigation function makes it possible, in particular, to display on a screen in the cockpit of the aircraft an airport map upon which is indicated, in particular, the current position of said aircraft.
Generally, such an airport viewing system comprises at least:                a first means for determining the current position of the aircraft;        a memory for recording at least one airport map;        a display device which is able to present, on at least one viewing screen, at least partially an airport map with which can be associated a symbol illustrating said current position of the aircraft; and        an interface means allowing an operator to operate on the display used by said display device.        
Such an airport viewing system has several disadvantages.
Firstly, the memory of said system is not capable of recording all of the maps of the various airports which are likely to be of interest to the pilot (or more generally to the crew of the aircraft) during a flight. In fact, it is known that, during a single flight, the crew is generally called upon to display various airports and, in particular, the departure airport and the destination airport and possibly also a diversion airport or any other airport for which the crew would need to have information.
Secondly, the crew must manually select each time, using said interface means, the map which is appropriate to the current situation. Such a manual selection represents a large workload since, depending on the flight phase and in particular during the approach to a new airport, the crew must select the appropriate airport map each time. Moreover, as said airport viewing system can present only one single airport map at a time, when the crew needs information on an airport other than the one which corresponds to the current situation and which is displayed, it is obliged to replace that displayed airport map with the new map in which it is interested, such that it thus loses the information relating to the airport associated with the current position of the aircraft.